Book Chapter

Blasphemy through British (post) colonial eyes: The Indian Criminal Code

Abstract

This chapter investigates the construction of the blasphemy provisions of the Indian Criminal Code of 1860 and its subsequent revisions. This is shown to have a substantial afterlife as a touchstone of potential multicultural significance in refereeing between the competing claims of different religious groups. As such, it has regularly been invoked as a possible solution to issues facing countries seeking to move beyond protection for a state religion to a wider recognition of the rights of all the religious. The Code’s provisions also seemed attractive because they focussed upon apparently equalising conceptions of public order, but the politics surrounding this often served to inhibit the wholesale adoption of its provisions.

Attached files

Authors

Nash, David

Oxford Brookes departments

Department of History, Philosophy and Culture

Dates

Year of publication: 2020
Date of RADAR deposit: 2021-01-13

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of Blasphemy through British (post) colonial eyes: The Indian Criminal Code
This RADAR resource is Part of Blasphemies compared: Transgressive speech in a globalised world [ISBN: 9780367254223] / edited by Anne Stensvold (Routledge, 2020).